Office 365 for Employees

College employees will continue to access email and calendar as they always have. Nothing will appear to change and you won’t have to do anything special. 

You will access your email and calendar from home or other off campus locations using MyMC. A direct web link to the Office 365 site, which you will be able to bookmark in your personal devices’ browser, will be available soon.

When accessing Office 365 directly, use your MyMCID@montgomerycollege.edu as your login username and your MyMC password as your password.
Click on the box labeled “Remember my credentials” to save your information.
Note – Your College email address that includes your first name and your last name will not work.

Your email address will not change.

Outlook is the desktop program used to access e-mail (Office 365 email) at work.
Office 365 is the service that hosts MC’s e-mail system and all other Office applications.

All shared mailboxes and delegated email/calendars will transfer to Office 365 and will work just like they do now.

If you only access email via desktop Outlook, you will not notice a single change other than you will need to log into Outlook with your MyMC ID@montgomerycollege.edu and password rather than your current credentials.

If you access email via Outlook Web Access (OWA) you will need to enter your MyMCID@montgomerycollege.edu and your MyMC password.

You can access your email from any current web browser. Just log in with your MyMCID@montgomerycollege.edu and MyMC password rather than your original email username and password.

Office 365 includes email, calendar, contacts, instant messaging, online conferencing with desktop sharing (Skype for Business), individual file storage (OneDrive), and web apps that provide a level of functionality with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. Additionally, Office Professional includes a free download for up to 5 personal devices on the Windows, Macintosh, iOS, and Android platforms. Other functionality may be added as appropriate when it becomes available from Microsoft.

You can store documents and photos online in OneDrive, so they can be accessed from any Internet-connected computer and be shared with others.​ It includes:

1 TB of password-protected online storage
Private, shared, and public folders. Links to files from OneDrive can be shared with fellow employees, students, or people outside of the College.
Deleted items go into the recycle bin, where they stay until they’re automatically removed 90 days later. During the 90-day period, you can remove files from the recycle bin to free up storage space or restore items to their original location if you’ve accidentally deleted them. Once a file has been removed from the recycle bin, it can no longer be recovered.
 The data storage is still considered property of the College and should follow the Acceptable Usage Policy (AUP).

Three icons will be on your desktop: Skype, One Drive, and Office 365. Skype for Business is used for instant messaging and web conferencing. OneDrive is for individual file storage accessibility from your PC or mobile device.
The Office 365 icon can be used to access all applications.
Reminder: To access your email, do as you have always done and simply click on the Outlook icon.

Items that are in Deleted Items or Junk email folders are purged from accounts after 30 days.

Items that have been purged from Deleted Items or Junk email folders will be permanently gone and can no longer be recovered. To avoid inadvertently removing files permanently, OIT recommends never emptying the Office 365 recycle bins.

When using a College computer, the computer user is logged into Office 365, even if you try to use a different name. If you don’t log off of your computer, another user could come up and use that computer, and if they try to go to Office 365, they will go to YOUR Office 365 account, with access to your mail and data. It is a smart security practice to log off every time you finish using a College computer.

Installing a second copy of Office 365 will not only create major issues with the existing Office installation, it is also a violation of our licensing agreement with Microsoft.

Internet Explorer 8 or above
Safari 5 or above
Latest FireFox “Release” version
Latest Chrome “Stable” version

Microsoft Office Professional is a productivity software suite that includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Access (Access is available only on PCs) for personal use, is installed locally on your computer, and would need to be purchased.
Microsoft Online Office 365 is a cloud-based, online service that provides e-mail, shared calendars, instant messaging, web conferencing, individual cloud storage, and online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote than can be used anywhere you have an Internet connection. It does not install the application(s) to the computer you are using.
Office ProPlus is the Office Suite you can install on up to 5 PC/Macs and up to 5 mobile devices (iPad, iPhone, Android, etc.) by clicking on the Install now button in Office 365. This will install Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and Access (Access only on a PC) on the computer you are using. You should only install ProPlus on your personally-owned devices. You should not install ProPlus from Office 365 on your College equipment or in public use devices (like an Internet Café where computers are provided for you).

The “cloud” is a friendly way of describing web-based computing services that are hosted outside of your organization. When you use cloud-based services, your IT infrastructure resides off your property (off-premises), and is maintained by a third party (hosted), instead of residing on a server at your home or business (on-premises) that you maintain. With Office 365, for example, information storage, computation, and software are located and managed remotely on servers owned by Microsoft. Many services you use every day are a part of the cloud—everything from web-based e-mail to mobile banking and online photo storage. Because this infrastructure is located online or “in the cloud,” you can access it virtually anywhere; from a PC, tablet, smartphone, or other device with an Internet connection.

Microsoft has set limitations. For more information, read the information available from Microsoft: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/exchange-online-limits.aspx.

Office 365 has built-in anti-virus technology. Virus and malware protection should be approached in layers, and for this reason it is highly recommended that anti-virus software be installed on your computer, and that it and virus definitions be kept up to date.

Office 365 has built-in Microsoft spam fighting technology, but the College is keeping our third-party filtering technology known as Proofpoint at this time.

Office 365 is only available to current Montgomery College employees. Once employees leave the College, they will lose access to their College Office 365 account. The only exception is retirees who elect to keep their College email account. They will continue to have an Office 365 account, but it will only provide Mail. The retiree’s Office 365 account will not have the Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), OneDrive, etc. Email messages will remain in the Mail application, but any data in OneDrive will no longer be accessible.

Programs (such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) you have downloaded to your personal Mac, PC, mobile device, or tablet give you a warning that your subscription to the services has expired. After a certain amount of time (determined by Microsoft) the applications will turn into View Only format. You will be able to read documents, but you will no longer be able to edit or create new ones. Former employees may then enroll in other available consumer or commercial Office 365 offers, at their expense, to renew the subscription and continue to use the full functionality of these applications.
If you downloaded the suite of programs, you will see a message indicating that your subscription has expired along with the option to sign up, at a cost, for a personal Office 365 account in order to continue using those applications.

There are many resources available to leverage the capabilities in Office 365:

Microsoft Office 365 Training Centernew window provides numerous courses and guides.

Have you used LinkedIn Learning yet? LinkedIn Learning is a training resource available to all Montgomery College employees. If you have not used LinkedIn Learning, you will need to create your user ID during your initial access, which can be found in MyMC.